


I Wanna Dance With Somebody

by prettydizzeed



Category: High School Musical (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-27 14:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13249707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: As Chad is heading to his car—used, very used, but his, which made waiting tables all summer totally worth it, although he’s never going to admit that to Troy—he sees Ryan walking in the opposite direction, out of the mascot costume by now. His clothes look dry, and he’s definitely towelled off his hair; it’s sticking up worse than it did the one time in September when someone made the mistake of yanking Ryan’s hat off his head during homeroom. Chad looks around, but he doesn’t see any other cars in the parking lot besides the one he knows to be Jason’s, so he figures Ryan must be waiting for someone to come pick him up.“Hey, Evans!” he calls. “Need a ride to the afterparty?”***Disney got scared when people started saying that there were *gasp* gay characters in their idyllic fictional high school, so here's the version of High School Musical 3: Senior Year that doesn't end with a heavy dose of compulsory heterosexuality.





	1. Chad

**Author's Note:**

> Happy 20gayteen! a huge thank you to everyone who supported my previous hsm fic, "never danced like this before," and welcome to everyone who found this one without reading that! This is something I've wanted to write pretty much since I was nine and saw hsm3 and, without knowing that gay people existed, much less that, yknow, I was one, left the theater knowing that there was no way Ryan and Kelsi would've been anything other than best friends.
> 
> I never would've had the motivation to write this if it weren't for y'all, so thank you, and I hope you like it!
> 
> title is from "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" by Whitney Houston

Sixteen minutes left, and they’re down by a hell of a lot more than sixteen points.

Everyone in the locker room is dejected, slumped against the lockers, occasionally remembering to take a drink from the water bottles they’re gripping too tightly. Chad tips his head back against the cool metal and sighs. Beside him, Troy is equally frustrated. It’s their senior year; they were supposed to be kings. Basketball has been their life for so long that it tears something apart inside him to watch it end like this.

When Chad was a little kid shooting baskets on the lowered goal in their driveway and his mom called out the back door for him to come in, his dad would always grin at him and say, “Dinner can wait a few more minutes. End on a make,” and wait until Chad made a basket to go inside. His mom would roll her eyes and put their plates in the microwave. He wishes now that they could keep playing, game after game until their high school career ended on a make, on a win. There’s something achingly painful about their last season not being their best, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

Coach Bolton stands in the doorway, looks around, and nods sharply like he does at practice when he’s about to give them Life Advice and then make them run five more laps. What comes out of his mouth now, though, isn’t anything about hard work paying off.

“Okay, guys. You have sixteen minutes left in your last game of the season. And for the seniors, sixteen minutes left in your last game at East High,” he says, and Chad is suddenly overwhelmingly grateful that the championship is a home game. “Make it count. Forget about the X’s and O’s and go out there and play a game you’ll be proud to look back on as your last game together.”

Everyone stands in silence for a few seconds, although they’re slumping slightly less. Troy nods, and nudges him. Chad knows the cue.

This is the last time he’s going to do this, he thinks distantly. Sure, maybe it’ll happen at a party, or pep rally for another sport, or years later at a reunion, but this is the last time he’ll do it for real, in the heat of the moment, with all of his teammates here. He yells as loudly as he can.

“WHAT TEAM?”

“ ** _WILDCATS!_** ”

“WHAT TEAM?”

“ ** _WILDCATS!_** ”

“WHAT TEAM?”

“ ** _WILDCATS!_** ”

“WILDCATS!”

“ ** _GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME!_** ”

Chad leads the way out the locker room, and everyone claps each other on the back as they head back out to the court, re-energized. He notices that the cheerleaders look really tired in the half-second he can spare before focusing on the ball, not that he can blame them. The mascot is doing some sort of fancy dance moves—he vaguely remembers Darbus reading off some announcement about needing a last-minute replacement after some sophomore sprained their ankle, but he doesn’t know who she managed to rope into doing it. Whoever it is, they haven’t let East High’s slim chances of winning get to them as much as everyone else in the stadium has, but they definitely seem less upbeat than at the beginning of the game.

Chad shakes his head to clear it. _Get your head in the game, Danforth._ The voice in his head sounds like Coach Bolton, which is both motivating and really creepy.

One of the juniors on the team steals the ball and passes it to Zeke, who manages to make a layup, which goes a long way toward lifting everyone’s spirits, even if it doesn’t do that much toward narrowing the margin between the teams’ scores. Then Troy gets knocked over, and Chad knows he’s probably exaggerating the fall—they’ve been practicing that together since sixth grade—but he still winces. He can hear his dad yelling “That’s a foul!” over the voices of all the other outraged fans.

“You okay?” Chad asks, helping him up, and Troy looks dazed for a second, staring at the stands, before nodding. The ref calls it in their favor.

Troy makes the free throw. It’s looking like they can actually pull this off.

Ten minutes and two baskets later, when Chad gets knocked over, he cheers. That’s called in their favor, too, and Chad leaps to his feet, punching the air. It’s a bonus that the West High player who knocked him over looks really pissed.

Coach Bolton calls a time out. They’re only down by two, and Troy’s game plan is to put in the kid who unironically chooses to be called Rocketman. Chad can’t help but question Troy’s judgement, a little, but he’s not about to say anything; he knows he would’ve killed for the chance to play in the championship as a sophomore, and as long as Troy gets the ball, it’ll be fine.

Rocketman is entirely too hyper, but then again, he has been sitting on the bench all game. Chad really hopes Troy knows what he’s doing.

Everything is going according to plan; Troy gets the ball, and with ten seconds left, he leans around a West High player and—

He passes it. Rocketman is looking at the basketball like he’s never seen one before in his life, and Chad has just enough time to panic that this kid is going to cost them the championship before he makes a perfect layup. Chad is willing to bet that was pure muscle memory, and he’s suddenly very glad for all the mindless baskets Coach Bolton made them shoot at the start of every practice.

Amid all the frantic cheering and jumping and screaming and flashing lights and red and white _everywhere_ , the mascot manages to catch Chad’s eye, throwing their hands up in a mix of celebration and relief and crashing to their knees in a move that would look painful if it wasn’t so obviously practiced. Chad keeps looking as someone from the Pep Club takes the mascot’s helmet off, and—

It’s Ryan Evans, gasping for clean (well, relatively; they’re still on a high school basketball court) air and shaking his head vigorously. His hair is soaked, and little droplets fly off. It looks like a shot from an overdramatic shampoo commercial, just a lot sweatier. He’s gotten a haircut since the summer, although Chad isn’t sure when; they’re in the same homeroom, but Ryan’s always wearing a hat, so it’s hard to tell.

Someone slaps Chad on the back and pulls him in for a hug, and he looks away from Ryan and lets himself get swept up in the energy. They did it. They won.

It was their last game.

He shoves away the bittersweetness of it; he can deal with that after the party. Instead, he focuses on the glory: they just won their second championship in a row.

He congratulates Rocketman and makes sure he’s out of earshot before asking Troy what the fuck he was thinking. Troy shrugs and says, “It worked, didn’t it?” and Chad can’t really argue with that, but he still shakes his head at him. Chad’s parents find him amid the chaos and hug him, even though he’s sweaty and they’re in nice clothes because they came directly from work, and Coach Bolton grins at him and tells him he should be proud, and everyone rehashes the same plays over again more and more loudly until Troy’s mom yells that they need to get over to the Bolton’s house so the janitors can clean in peace.

As he’s heading to his car—used, very used, but his, which made waiting tables all summer totally worth it, although he’s never going to admit that to Troy—he sees Ryan walking in the opposite direction, out of the mascot costume by now. His clothes look dry, and he’s definitely towelled off his hair; it’s sticking up worse than it did the one time in September when someone made the mistake of yanking Ryan’s hat off his head during homeroom. Sharpay had inhaled sharply, probably about to inform them what brand they’d treated so callously and exactly how much money it was worth, and Darbus had said “Mr. Prescott!” in her most indignant tone, but the guy hadn’t looked remotely worried until Chad glanced at him and said calmly, “What, man, did you think that would be funny? Stop taking people’s shit,” and What’s-His-Name Prescott had blanched and stiffly held the hat out toward Ryan, who had put it back on with a bit of a haughty sniff but also with an appreciative glance at Chad. Taylor had been giving him that look, slightly impressed and slightly shocked, like, _I didn’t know you could express basic human decency, good job_ , and Darbus didn’t even give him detention for swearing.

And now, Ryan is whistling one of the less annoying cheers to himself and walking towards the front of the school. Chad looks around, but he doesn’t see any other cars in the parking lot besides the one he knows to be Jason’s, so he figures Ryan must be waiting for someone to come pick him up.

“Hey, Evans!” he calls. “Need a ride to the afterparty?”

Ryan whirls on his heel, ridiculously graceful for someone who has to be exhausted from hyping up the crowd for the last couple of hours. “Wasn’t invited,” Ryan calls back, but he’s smiling, and lifting one shoulder in a casual shrug. “Team members only, and all that.”

“I think you showed more than enough team spirit to qualify.” Ryan grins wider at that. “You wanna come?”

“Yeah, why not,” Ryan says, already walking to Chad’s car. “It’s that or paint Sharpay’s nails, so…”

It takes Chad a beat too long to get that it’s a joke—probably—but he laughs, and unlocks the car. He shoves some random shit, including several empty water bottles and a mostly-clean t-shirt, into the back, then realizes as Ryan’s getting in that he probably needs that shirt, so he twists around in his seat to grab it from where it’s precariously close to sliding off the backseat and onto the floor.

“Is it cool if I change?” he asks, and Ryan makes a funny expression but nods. He looks out the window while Chad yanks off his sweaty uniform and tugs the t-shirt on. He fumbles for the deodorant he keeps in the door, hastily applies it, and puts his warm-up jacket back on, then cranks the car. Ryan looks back at him.

“I should probably text my mom,” he says, mostly to himself, and pulls his phone out of the pocket of his ridiculously tight, ridiculously red jeans to do so. Chad nods and backs out of the parking space.

He’s expecting them to ride in silence—they haven’t had a real conversation since last summer, although they exchange nods in the hall sometimes and grin at each other when they both snort at one of the more outlandish things Darbus says in homeroom—but Ryan comments on the West High player who fouled out close to the end, and Chad launches into how the refs refused to call anything in their favor for the first half and what would’ve happened if he’d been the one to knock a guy over like that. Ryan looks mostly amused, and Chad figures he’s probably just humoring him, but Ryan adds something about how pairing those shades of blue and yellow together is a crime against humanity and whoever chose their school colors should be fired, or maybe arrested, and Chad laughs and relaxes somewhat. Trash talk is trash talk, even if he doesn’t know shit about the difference between yellow and chartreuse or the best design for uniform shorts.

When they get to Troy’s house, the party is already in full force. There are cheerleaders everywhere, yelling at least three different cheers at once, and all of the basketball players are laughing and talking loudly. Chad recognizes a few guys who were seniors last year and makes a note to go talk to them later. Ryan was right; everyone here is on the cheerleading or basketball team, or the date of someone on the team, like Gabriella, except—

“Hey, is that Taylor and Kelsi?” he asks. It is; they’re both nodding energetically to the music, a pair of red headphones pressed to Kelsi’s ears.

“Hey, Danforth!” Chad looks around. It’s not the first time someone’s called his name in the approximately two minutes he’s been here, but that is unmistakably Coach Bolton’s voice. Chad spots him and waves. “Come here, there’s someone I’d like you to meet,” Coach Bolton calls, and Chad nods, noticing that his dad is already standing over there.

“I’m going to go say hi to Kelsi,” Ryan says, smiling at him. “Good luck with whatever’s going on.”

“Yeah, I’ll catch up with you later,” Chad says, and smiles back. He walks over to Coach Bolton.

“Chad, I’d like you to meet Mr. Harrison. He’s the basketball coach at U of A.”

Chad gapes. The man holds out his hand, and Chad shakes it, trying to keep his grip firm even though his knees feel kind of wobbly.

“That was a hell of a game you boys played,” Mr. Harrison says, and Chad about falls over. The coach of the team he’s wanted to play for since kindergarten, maybe before, watched their game.

“Thank you so much, sir,” he says, and spends the next half hour talking about plays he made and potential scholarships and wondering if this is real. The coach says he’s pretty much guaranteed a spot on the team if he keeps his grades up, and before Chad has time to freak out over that—it looks like his dad is already close to crying—Mr. Harrison asks where Troy is. Chad was expecting that the second he walked up, so he’s honestly kind of flattered that the coach waited that long.

“I’ll go find him,” he says, and Mr. Harrison nods and shakes his hand again.

“I’ll see you this fall, if not before,” he says, and Chad grins at him and runs to find Troy.

“Dude, you gotta get over there, your dad’s been trying to call you for like forty minutes,” Chad says when he finally finds him, barely sparing a glance for Gabriella. “The coach from U of A is here—Troy, he watched our game, and he’s talking scholarships.”

Troy’s eyes don’t even widen. Chad gives him a look like _what the fuck, man_ , which only intensifies when Troy nods and says, “Yeah, okay, I’ll catch up with them later.”

“Dude. We’ve been talking about playing for U of A since we were six. What are you doing?”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’m not six anymore, Chad.” Chad notices Gabriella backing away out the corner of his eye.

“Yeah, I know that, but we were talking about it _last week_.” He bites his lip before he says something he’ll regret, like, _just because you can afford to throw opportunities like this away doesn’t mean we all can, so maybe at least act like it’s a big deal_.

“I’ll talk to them later, okay?” Troy says, looking irritated, and Chad shrugs and steps back.

“Whatever, man. It’s your future.”

“Yeah, that’s what everyone keeps telling me,” Troy mutters, and Chad is glad he’s already turned away so Troy doesn’t see him roll his eyes; he doesn’t want to start a fight in the middle of the party.

He looks around, bursting with both excitement over U of A and annoyance with Troy and not sure where to direct the energy. He sees Ryan a few yards away, talking to a cheerleader and looking distinctly uncomfortable.

“Sup, Evans,” he says, walking up to them, and Ryan flashes him a relieved look.

“Hey! How was Mr. Bolton?”

“God, it was amazing. He introduced me to the coach of U of A—who _watched our game_ , what the fuck, man—and they’ve pretty much confirmed that I’m getting a scholarship. They said I’ll get it in writing in a month or so as long as nothing drastic happens with my grades and stuff.” Chad is bouncing on his toes. He can’t keep the grin off his face.

“Holy shit, that’s incredible!” Ryan beams at him, and the cheerleader huffs and walks off. “You deserve it.”

“Thanks, man. God, I can’t believe it.”

“I can,” Ryan says, and Chad laughs.

He looks over at the food table. “I’m gonna go get some of Gabriella’s mom’s brownies to celebrate.”

“They’re gone,” Ryan says before Chad even takes a step. “She made like three batches, but there are a lot of hungry basketball players here.”

“Shit.” Chad is probably more disappointed than he should be over brownies, but whatever, he’s still pretty upset about Troy and they’re damn good brownies.

“But,” Ryan says, a smirk hovering on his face, “someone might have stashed a few beside Kelsi’s DJ equipment.”

“No way.”

Ryan shrugs. “I, uh, I remembered from this summer that you liked them, so… When it seemed like you would be talking with them for a while, I grabbed you a few. I figured if you didn’t talk to me again during the party, me and Kelsi could still eat them.” He sounds teasing, but Chad still feels the need to reassure him.

“Hey, I invited you, I wasn’t going to totally ditch you. I’m shocked you think so little of me, Evans,” and now he’s the one teasing, and Ryan grins. They walk over to where Kelsi is DJing and get there just as Taylor arrives, balancing three paper plates of food.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” Chad says, reaching for a pig in a blanket, and Taylor turns smoothly so he can’t reach it without spilling anything, which is impressive.

“I didn’t,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Ooh, they still had some quiches left!” Kelsi says, and smiles at Taylor. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Oh, and the paw print cookies aren’t vegetarian.”

“Who would make a cookie with meat in it?” Chad asks, and Taylor rolls her eyes again.

“They probably have lard in them,” Ryan says before Taylor can tell Chad he’s an idiot.

“Oh. That sucks.”

Kelsi shrugs. “The sugar cookies are really good, though. And the brownies were amazing.”

“The ones for Chad are still here, right?” Ryan asks, and Kelsi produces a bundle of napkins from somewhere amid the tangle of wires on the table.

“Didn’t eat them, didn’t electrocute them,” she says, and shakes her head when Ryan breathes a sigh of relief. “As if I would. You made me swear on my autographed picture of Idina Menzel, remember?”

Ryan flushes slightly and puts the carefully-wrapped brownies on the table. Chad unwraps it. “Oh my god, you guys are the best.” Kelsi and Ryan are shooting looks at one another, but Chad ignores that in favor of shoving the first of the three brownies into his mouth. He closes his eyes and can’t help moaning a little.

“Disgusting,” Taylor says. Ryan coughs.

Chad spends the next half hour watching Kelsi DJ and slowly savoring the remaining two brownies. Taylor shoos him away a few minutes later when he tries to steal another piece of food from her plate, and he ends up wandering the edge of the Boltons’ backyard with Ryan, trying to escape the worst of the noise. Several people had come up and congratulated him while he was with Taylor and Kelsi, including the guys who were on the team last year, so he doesn’t feel the need to get back in the crowd and socialize right now.

“Is that Troy up there?” Ryan says suddenly, and Chad looks at where he’s pointing.

“And Gabriella,” Chad says. They’re in the tree house, running after each other and giggling. “So much for no girls allowed.”

Ryan snorts. “If I’d ever dared to deem something ‘no girls allowed,’ Sharpay would’ve had my head.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Chad agrees, laughing. It’s weird—he invited Ryan here on a whim, because he didn’t want him to feel left out or anything, but he’s actually really easy to talk to. Chad’s brain helpfully supplies an image of the staff baseball game over the summer, as it has several times throughout the semester, usually at far less relevant moments. It’s ironic—he’d been pissed that Gabriella had dared to include Ryan in the staff-only game, and now he’s the one who invited Ryan to the team-only party. He was the mascot, though, which gives him more than enough reason to be here, although Chad can’t remember if the mascot has ever come to these parties before, maybe because he still isn’t sure who the usual mascot was.

Ryan wrinkles his nose. He’s looking around as if the air has personally offended him. “Kelsi swore she wouldn’t play this song.”

Chad shrugs. He doesn’t recognize the song, but he says, “It’s not bad,” anyway, just to see Ryan’s reaction.

Ryan lifts an eyebrow. “Hate to break it to you, Danforth, but you have terrible taste. I’m going to go beg her to change it.”

Chad glances at the tree house where he spent the majority of his childhood. Troy and Gabriella are still up there, staring into one another’s eyes. He could go pester Troy about U of A again, or even just see if he wants to rejoin the party, or he could find Zeke and Jason and rehash the game for the tenth time tonight. Or—

“Wait up, Evans!” Chad calls, and runs after Ryan.


	2. Ryan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for all of your support of this work!! i hope you continue to enjoy it <3

Ryan isn’t nearly awake enough for this. Sharpay has had no less than four fashion crises this morning, and Taylor is rattling off a schedule of events so fast that even Gabriella looks like she can’t quite process it. The part he does catch, though, is Taylor talking about prom: “The theme is The Last Waltz,” she says, “and there’s limited space, so don’t be the last to pick up your tickets.” She emphasizes this by smacking her pointer down on Chad’s desk, and Ryan swallows. He has it on good word—namely, Kelsi’s—that Chad and Taylor aren’t _a thing,_ but that suggests otherwise.

“Any questions?” she asks, and before Ryan can think of a way to ask her to repeat herself that won’t make it seem like he wasn’t paying attention, Chad raises his hand.

“Yeah, just one. What’s the lunch special in the cafeteria?”

Taylor doesn’t bat an eye, much less roll them. “New York deli.”

The whole class lets out a heckling _oooooooh_. Chad meets his eyes for a second, and Ryan smirks.

“Now to the matter of the spring musicale,” Mrs. Darbus says, accompanying the words with the sweeping gesture they deserve.

Sharpay raises a hand, already talking, and Ryan wishes for Taylor’s infallible composure. “Mrs. Darbus, I know everyone will be busy this semester, especially at the end, with finals and prom and college applications, so perhaps we should consider a smaller production. Maybe even a one-woman show,” she finishes brightly, and Ryan rolls his eyes, turning his head out of her field of vision just in time to see Chad snort.

Mrs. Darbus, of course, looks shocked that anyone would have priorities that would take precedence over their final opportunity to perform at East High. Ryan has to admit he feels the same, even though he knows that grades come before theater for normal people whose parents can’t just buy their kids a college acceptance.

Not that he wants to go that route, but it’s a good fallback, if chemistry keeps going the way it has been.

“A little light on the sign-ups, are we, Kelsi?” Mrs. Darbus asks, somewhat recovered but still looking vaguely offended. Ryan prays to the theater gods that Kelsi comes up with something. Sharpay stealing the spotlight is one thing, but the entire stage? That’s the stuff of his nightmares. He isn't looking for a repeat of last summer.

Well, not _all_ of last summer, at least, he amends as his brain smugly supplies the mental image of Chad trying not to laugh as Ryan twirled to the bases in increasingly more elaborate moves; Chad looking him up and down and asking _You got game?_ like he already knew the answer; Chad wearing Ryan's clothes after asking how he could possibly run like _that_ in _those_ and Ryan saying they're more comfortable than they look and Chad saying he'd believe that when he felt it and Ryan, still giddy off a loss that ended with them practically entangled, tossing his shirt across the locker room as Chad visibly swallowed.

So yeah, maybe he's all too willing to relive certain parts of the summer. (Like how Chad had changed in the locker room without waiting for Ryan to leave first, as if it had never crossed his mind to be uncomfortable. Like how often he'd smiled at him.)

Ryan forces himself to tune back into the current drama, which he would normally enjoy shamelessly, but this is Kelsi. He wants her to succeed. Plus, the decision of whether he plays backup dancer to Sharpay’s two-hour monologue or actually gets a fucking part hinges on this.

“Um, no, we’re actually doing really well,” Kelsi is saying. She rushes to the front of the room with the list.

“Well, well, well,” says Mrs. Darbus, beaming, “Almost the entire homeroom!”

The entire homeroom is clearly about to protest that they did not, in fact, sign up, but they’re upstaged by Sharpay’s indignant gasping, which she punctuates with a loud stomp. So professional, his sister. Kelsi shrinks into her seat. Ryan is equal parts proud of her and afraid for her.

Thankfully, the bell for first period rings as Mrs. Darbus is announcing the meeting to discuss this semester’s production, and he and Kelsi rush out. They run to the practice room, and Ryan shuts the door behind them.

The two of them are technically in online AP Music Theory this period, which they are supposed to work on under Mrs. Darbus’s supervision. The situation was arranged by Mr. Matsui after Ryan’s parents made some pointed comments about how funding for the arts program at East High compared to that of the sports program and how the classes offered weren’t meeting their son’s needs, and they wouldn’t want to have to withdraw their generous donations to the drama department, now would they? Kelsi and Ryan normally end up working on whatever show is going on at the time or just talking, but they get their assignments done on time, and Mrs. Darbus stopped checking on them after about the first week. First period has become their place to strategize, to create, to perfect their visions for the East High Drama Department without Sharpay waltzing in demanding more solos, and just to talk about how fucking gay they are. It’s a perfect haven from the madness of the rest of the school.

“How are you going to pull this off?” Ryan asks, hands on his hips. He’s dramatic; it’s his job.

“I don’t know!” Kelsi says, pacing. Her hat is off, and she’s turning it around and around in her hands, which means this is serious.

“You’ve got to get Troy on board,” Ryan realizes, sighing. He’d really prefer for his senior year musical, his _last musical_ at East High, to not involve the jock-turned-Renaissance-man who’s never taken a singing lesson in his life, but he’d also prefer for there to be some actors other than Sharpay in this production, so it’s a lesser of two evils situation at this point. “Gabriella is the only one who actually signed up, and she’ll almost definitely try to persuade people that this is a good idea; if Troy agrees, that’ll give her the momentum to convince everyone else to join. No one can say no to her. Sorry,” he adds, and Kelsi rolls her eyes.

“I told you I was over her, like, four months ago. Calm down, Ry.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Only Sharpay gets to call me that.”

“Because you’re too afraid to tell her not to,” she teases, going to sit at the piano bench. Her hat is back on, which is a relief, so he lets her have that one and changes the subject instead.

“So Darbus is still down with the egocentric idea?” he asks, sitting beside her. Kelsi gives him a look like _I know what you’re doing but I’m not going to comment on it_ and, true to her facial expression, doesn’t mention that they met with Mrs. Darbus to discuss the rough drafts literally yesterday. “I didn’t think she’d go for that.”

“I mean, it’s totally her style, if you think about it. She would’ve loved to be in a play about herself when she was in high school.”

“That’s fair,” Ryan admits, and Kelsi elbows him.

“So you spent a lot of time with Chad at the party on Saturday…” She wiggles her eyebrows.

He rolls his eyes and laughs and evades the non-question, and soon enough the bell is ringing over their giggling, which is how first period normally ends. “See you in free period!” Kelsi calls, on her way to bio while he heads to chem, which is on the other side of the building.

It’s not like Broadway performers need to know how to calculate equilibrium, Ryan reminds himself after 50 minutes spent planning how to convince Troy to be in the show instead of taking actual notes. He gets to the auditorium before Kelsi, which is unusual, but he quickly sees why when she walks in followed by a group of their classmates, who don’t appear to have calmed down at all during the past two hours. Well. He’s always loved a challenge.

Everyone starts listing their prior commitments and problems and conflicts at Kelsi, who’s looking increasingly more stressed. Ryan’s a little concerned, but he’ll have to make her a cup of tea later; right now, he has work to do.

He walks up beside Troy and nudges him. “It was a little surprising that Gabriella signed up and you didn’t. I would’ve thought that after last summer, you would’ve wanted to be in a play with her for real again. But I mean, you’re busy with college stuff, I get that. Managing U of A stuff and working with Sharpay on the talent show seemed like a lot of work, I can understand why you wouldn’t want to try to balance that again.”

“Yeah,” Troy says. His brow has become increasingly furrowed throughout this interaction. “Yeah, man, I’m just really busy with college and everything.”

“Like I said, completely understandable. I’m sure Gabriella’s really busy, too; isn’t she applying to Stanford?”

“Yeah,” Troy says, nodding. He’s looking a little distracted by Kelsi, who is now holding her ground, but that’s fine; Ryan’s done all he needed to do.

Maybe someone who didn’t grow up with Sharpay as their moral measuring stick would feel ashamed right now, but whatever. The show must go on, and for that to happen, there needs to be a show to begin with.

Gabriella, as predicted, gives an impassioned speech about how it’s the last chance to do something like this together as a group. “Oh, yippee,” Sharpay says, rolling her eyes, and Ryan hides his smile. If she’s being that sarcastic, she must feel that her plot to perform a one-woman show is being threatened.

“So what do you say, Wildcats?” Gabriella asks.

The Wildcats say no.

Kelsi bites her lip and looks at him, and Ryan shrugs. It’s out of their hands now. He glances at Troy, who looks like he’s having some sort of crisis, which is promising.

Troy raises his hand. “I’m in.” Kelsi squeezes Ryan’s arm.

“I don’t know how you do it,” she whispers.

Ryan shrugs. “A little guilt-tripping goes a long way,” he whispers back.

“Well, thanks for using your powers for good,” she says, grinning at him as Taylor starts questioning the time commitment.

“Yeah, and what the heck is the show about?” Chad asks, and Ryan swallows. Apparently choreographing one production with Chad in it wasn’t enough to exempt him for life; this is probably his penance to the universe for all the manipulation he just did to orchestrate this, in which case he can’t say he really regrets it.

“You, Mr. Danforth,” Mrs. Darbus says, dramatic as always. That’s pretty ironic, actually, because Kelsi revised all of Ryan’s initial ideas to include significantly less of Chad. (“It makes no sense to include scenes from the summer in a musical about senior year, Ryan.” “But those scenes highlight important character development!” Et cetera.)

Chad gapes. “Me?”

Sharpay slumps into the arms of that blonde girl who’s been following her around lately. Ryan wants to laugh, or maybe pat himself on the back for how well he and Kelsi have managed to keep this project from her, but instead he rushes for her perfume. The blonde girl sprays it on Sharpay, who immediately “revives.” Right. Ryan might be failing chemistry, but he knows that’s not how that works.

“The spring musicale is about all of you,” Mrs. Darbus clarifies. “A show about your final days at East High. We’ll call it _Senior Year_.” The handful of underclassmen in the drama club are not going to be happy about this, Ryan knows, but he can’t bring himself to feel bad about Mrs. Darbus’s favoritism.

“Genius,” Sharpay deadpans, smirking, and Ryan shares an exasperated look with Kelsi.

“Playing a role is easy,” Mrs. Darbus says, continuing her glide around the room, “but being yourself? Now that’s a challenge.” Ryan smiles softly to himself; that’s exactly what she told him when he came out to her, a scared freshman worried that he’d only ever love the theater. _“And what, exactly, is wrong with that, Mr. Evans?”_ she’d asked, and he’d stammered out through tears that he wanted to have a person in his life, too, not just feathers and glitter and showtunes.

 _“You have plenty of people who bring love into your life, Mr. Evans,”_ she’d reminded him, and her smile was more gentle than usual. _“And besides, the theatre will look out for you. It’s how my wife and I met.”_

Ryan focuses back on what Mrs. Darbus is saying as she walks past him. “Now,” she announces, “I have some very important news from The Juilliard School in New York City, America’s preeminent college for the performing arts. For the first time in East High history, Juilliard is considering four of you for one available scholarship.”

Ryan might need Sharpay’s perfume, unscientific though it may be, because he is going to faint on the spot.

“Miss Sharpay Evans,” Mrs. Darbus says proudly, extending a booklet of information, and Ryan tries not to be miffed that he isn’t first.

“I’m already packed,” Sharpay says smugly, and Ryan rolls his eyes. That makes it clear where he stands, then; Sharpay will toss him aside in a heartbeat. Nothing’s changed since last summer.

“Mr. Ryan Evans,” Mrs. Darbus continues, and Ryan tries not to jump up and down too much.

“Dance,” he says, grinning, almost afraid to touch the pristine booklet.

“Kelsi Nielson.” Kelsi looks shocked, which is ridiculous, because if Sharpay gets one, so should she. Ryan hugs her even as she gapes. “And lastly, Mr. Troy Bolton.”

The universe has one hell of a sense of humor. Chad must think so, too, because he laughs, along with the other basketball players and Troy himself. Ryan’s heart is still racing faster than before his first audition, Kelsi is beside him trying not to cry, and Troy is laughing.

“I didn’t apply,” Troy says, “I’ve never heard of Juilliard,” and Ryan knows he’s done a lot of questionable shit, but _come on_ , even Sharpay doesn’t deserve this, to have their fucking lives’ work equated to that of some amateur who got lucky with a callback to a performance he didn’t even want to be in junior year and _hasn’t fucking heard of Juilliard_. The theater gods are making a mockery of them.

“Well, that may be, Mr. Bolton,” Mrs. Darbus replies, dangerously calm, “but evidently, Juilliard has heard of you.”

Sharpay’s affronted expression is exactly the one Ryan wants to be making, but he doesn’t, because he’s a good actor. Good enough to get a scholarship to Juilliard, no matter how certain Sharpay is that it’ll be hers.

 

Of course, the scholarship is all Sharpay wants to talk about at lunch. Ryan’s already pissed that Troy was just handed something Ryan’s been working for since his kindergarten ballet recital and then didn’t give a shit about it, treated it like a fucking _joke_ , and now he gets to also be pissed that Sharpay continues to act like she’s already been accepted.

He orders the New York deli, and by the time Sharpay’s shadow or whatever she is sets Sharpay’s ridiculously fancy tray down at their table, Sharpay is already planning out the rest of their lives.

“Just think how amazing it’ll be when I get the lead in the first audition after college, Ry,” she gushes, and takes a dainty bite of something that was definitely not cooked in the cafeteria kitchen.

“And will there be a part for me?” He doesn’t bother to disguise the sarcasm, not that she notices.

“Well, of course,” she huffs, and he rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, right. I can see the billboard now: ‘Sharpay and What’s-His-Name.’”

“Sounds exciting, right?” she asks, obviously ignoring all of his concerns in favor of her daydream. Not that he expected any different.

“Yeah, very inviting,” he says, to himself at this point, and makes a face.

Sharpay starts counting off her future staff on her perfectly manicured fingers. “I’ll have a personal stylist, an agent, a publicist, a maid, a chauffeur…”

He doesn’t point out that she already has the last two. “Okay, Shar, I get it. What I don’t get is, where do I fit into this?”

“We’re a team, Ry,” she says, like it’s obvious, like she’s ever treated him as an equal. “With you we can win. Don’t you want it all—fame, fortune, a star on my dressing room door, my name in lights at Carnegie Hall…”

He does want it—his name, not hers, some piece of stardom that belongs to Ryan Evans, not to ‘Sharpay and her twin’—more than anything, so badly it burns in his bloodstream. So badly his chest hurts.

Sharpay is looking at him expectantly. “Yeah, okay, I want it,” he agrees. “But they’re only giving one scholarship.”

Sharpay waves this off like it’s irrelevant. “We’re twins. They’re going to have to take us both.”

Ryan knows that isn’t true, and he knows that when it comes down to it, it won’t matter that they’re twins; Sharpay will care about winning more than anything else. And so will he.

“We just need to make sure that Troy isn’t going to upstage us,” Sharpay continues, fully into scheming mode by now. “Kelsi always writes the best songs for Troy and Gabriella,” she pouts, and proceeds to instruct him on how to schmooze his own damn best friend into giving Sharpay the best numbers. He supposes this is her only option, since she can’t pull the employer card like over the summer.

“And how do I do that?” he asks, because as much as he doesn’t want to continue this conversation, he needs to remind himself how little she knows and cares about his life.

“I don’t know,” she says, waving a hand, “Buy her coffee, polish her glasses. Take her to prom,” she suggests, as if he isn’t gay. “Figure it out.”

Well. Now that he has been sufficiently reminded that Sharpay doesn’t give a shit about his life unless it benefits hers, he needs to yell about it.

“Great idea, sis,” he says, plastering on a smile. “In fact, I think I’ll try to find Kelsi right now.”

“That’s the spirit,” Sharpay says. Ryan is already walking off. He puts his tray up and heads to the practice room. Thankfully, Kelsi’s in there, eating her veggie wrap at the piano bench.

“If you damage the instruments, Mrs. Darbus will kill you. And she won’t let you compose the musical.” Kelsi rolls her eyes as he sits down beside her; she knows how many times he’s balanced a cup of coffee in one hand while playing piano with the other.

“I take it Sharpay is less-than-pleasant company at the moment?” she asks, and he sighs dramatically, flopping back against the piano keys so they make a loud clanging noise. It’s a sign of how much time they spend together that Kelsi doesn’t even wince. And Sharpay hasn’t even noticed they’re friends.

“She literally thinks I don’t know you,” he sighs, and proceeds to rant as Kelsi nods sympathetically.

“Hey,” he says when their lunch period is almost over, “Congratulations on Juilliard. You deserve this.”

Kelsi smiles and brushes it off, but it’s true. She probably deserves this more than he does.

 

By the end of the week, the prom committee is in full swing, pun completely intended (he wants to be a dance major, he’s allowed to make dumb jokes about it). Martha’s posters look amazing, and while Ryan isn’t sure why they need to start selling tickets two months early, he admires their dedication. The edits to the musical have been going great, and the opening song is ready for everyone to start rehearsing next week, so Ryan is humming as he heads to the practice room after school on Friday. He opens the door while balancing the two cups of coffee Mrs. Darbus had pretended not to see him snag from the teachers’ break room—and freezes.

Chad is standing in the middle of the room, talking to Kelsi, who’s seated at the piano as usual. He turns around when Ryan opens the door.

“They were out of creamer,” Ryan says, recovering his composure. Chad takes one of the precariously angled cups and passes it to Kelsi.

“I was just, uh, asking Kelsi for some pointers on the whole dancing thing,” Chad says, putting his hands in his pockets. “All this prom talk has got me kinda freaked out—apparently we have to actually waltz at The Last Waltz.”

“Who would’ve guessed,” Ryan says, smiling, and Chad laughs.

“Ryan’s the dance expert, not me,” Kelsi says. “Maybe you should ask him.”

Ryan tries to glare at her without Chad noticing. Kelsi smirks.

“Yeah, you’re majoring in dance, right?” Chad asks, and Ryan nods.

“Yeah, I am.” The only time he mentioned that around Chad was when he received the packet from Juilliard. Chad remembered. Ryan's not even sure if Sharpay knows his intended major, to be honest.

“Can you help me out?” Chad asks, and Ryan swallows. He is a professional. He’s taught dance for years. He can do this.

He’s taught dance to seniors and little kids for years, not cute guys his own age. He absolutely cannot do this.

“What all do you want to know?” Ryan asks as he starts stretching. It’s just a waltz, but you can never be too prepared; besides, he’ll probably be doing hours of yoga to destress from this whole experience afterwards.

“I mean, can you just, like, walk me through it?”

He is a professional. He is a professional. He is a really gay teenage boy and he is going to _die_. “Yeah, sure, like—you want me to dance with you?”

Chad shrugs. “Yeah, if that works.”

“Okay,” Ryan says, exhaling. “I don’t really know how to teach it without being the lead, and I’m used to leading, anyway, so I don’t know how that’ll work for you—”

“I don’t really care what part I’m doing or whatever, man, as long as I learn some of it. Taylor’s been on my case about learning the choreography for the play, and whenever I try to tell her we haven’t been taught the choreography yet, she just tells me to ‘figure something out, Chad. Use your time constructively instead of gazing forlornly at your basketball.’” He rolls his eyes. "I tried to tell her I don't dance, but apparently I have already committed to participate in the play and that is a commitment that must be honored no matter the sacrifice, so." He shrugs one shoulder. "You know how she gets. It was easier not to argue."

Kelsi grins. “I’m sure Taylor would be perfectly comfortable leading, anyway.” Ryan tries to shoot her a look, but she avoids looking at him. He’ll pester her about it later; for now, he needs to survive the next five minutes.

Ryan steps closer to Chad, and Kelsi starts playing a basic waltz on the piano. This is so fucking surreal, but Chad isn’t stepping back or telling him to stop or running out of the room screaming, so Ryan forces the stress away to deal with later and concentrates on the movements. “Okay, so just, take my hand like this... Hey, take a deep breath, you got this. It’s not that hard, I promise.” He moves his hand to Chad’s hip tentatively, watching for Chad to back up or flinch away, but he doesn’t, so Ryan settles his hand there and counts his breathing in his head. Chad puts his hand on Ryan’s back, and Ryan is going to die right here in this practice room and his goddamn gay ghost is going to haunt future theater nerds for the rest of East High’s existence.

“Let the music guide you,” Ryan says, which is one of his Dance Instructor Lines that he normally says to little old ladies and five-year-olds. “You can concentrate on the beat, at first, but you should try to get to the point where you just feel it, where it’s natural. Okay, so step back now. And just… follow me. One-two-three, one-two-three—yeah, that’s good, move your shoulders back a little and relax them. One-two-three, one-two-three—nice, yeah, let’s try that part again.”

Kelsi keeps playing as they waltz around the room a few times. “You seem to be getting the hang of it; try looking up from your feet now,” Ryan suggests, and immediately regrets saying it because that means Chad is meeting his eyes as they dance together and Ryan is going to spend the afterlife in a fucking public school. God. He’s also slightly concerned that his hand might catch on fire, or go numb, or otherwise just stop functioning, much like his brain; it’s a good thing he’s taught this dance so many times, because he is on autopilot right now, all of his awareness focused on the fact that he is _holding Chad Danforth’s hand._

“I think you’ve got it,” Ryan says finally, after determining that he will either faint or say something really, really stupid should this continue. He drops Chad’s hand and steps back. “You caught on pretty fast, I think you’ll be fine at picking up the choreography later.”

“Thanks, Evans,” Chad says, grinning. “Sorry for interrupting your meeting.”

Ryan shrugs. “No big deal.”

Chad grabs his backpack and heads to the door. “Have a good weekend,” he tells Kelsi, and then, “Later, Evans.” He’s still smiling.

Ryan waits until he’s out of earshot before flinging himself onto the piano bench. “Kelsi,” he says, pleading, “what the _fuck_.”

“Yep, you’re screwed,” she agrees pleasantly, and Ryan groans.


	3. Chad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for discussion of homophobia and hate crimes (nothing happens in the story, it's just characters talking about what they're afraid of etc). let me know if i should give any other warnings
> 
> thank you so much to everyone who's been reading this fic and to everyone who's left comments/kudos!! sorry it's slow going but y'all keep me motivated

Chad isn’t so sure about the whole lockers thing, honestly, but Troy had given him that look that has been getting them both into trouble since preschool, the one that says “you’re my best friend, what do you mean you won’t do this incredibly dumb shit with me?” and Chad had caved. So when Rocketman and Donnie look back at him, towels slung around their waists, and ask for the combination to his and Troy’s gym lockers, Chad smirks. “It’s like he said, you gotta earn ‘em.”

He takes off running.

He’s mostly just following Troy’s haphazard path through the school, but he keeps glancing back to make sure the freshmen aren’t slipping on the gym floor or the tile of the hallway; Troy might think this is funny, but Chad doesn’t want anyone busting their skull open. Around the time they get to the machine garage, he’s very actively fighting off his mom’s voice in his head from last month when she made him swear that if he chooses to join a fraternity next year, he won’t engage in any of that hazing bullshit.

“It’s juvenile, and it’s also dangerous,” she’d said. “Your father and I both know that we raised you to respect people more than that.”

Chad swallows and slows down a bit. If they catch up with him, he’ll give their clothes back, he reasons. Troy makes a turn for the theater.

Chad barely has time to register that Ryan is at the front of the stage, leading everyone in some sort of bizarre yoga stretch, before Troy is screeching to a halt stage left and Ryan’s eyes are widening and immediately averting. Everyone else is laughing, including Chad, but Ryan is quickly making his way to the curtains. He looks terrified.

“Yearbook opportunity!” Gabriella calls, and Chad grimaces behind his hand; he expects this bullshit from Troy—and himself, to be honest—but he would’ve thought Gabriella, at least, would be telling them to cut it out. Hopefully Taylor will say something, and then he’ll have a reason to toss their clothes back to them, and this will all be over. Except for the social torture the freshmen will have to deal with for a while.

“Even forms of hazing that seem ‘innocent’ can still cause trauma,” his mom had said, and she’s a psychologist, so she would know.

Taylor takes a photo, and Chad’s laughter becomes significantly more forced.

Mrs. Darbus looks intently at Rocketman and Donnie, and while Chad would’ve said thirty seconds ago that they couldn’t possibly get any more uncomfortable than they already were, he would’ve been wrong.

“Bold choice, gentlemen,” she says, and someone snorts. “We all must have the courage to discover ourselves” —and Chad could swear she glances at him, but it’s probably just because he’s holding their clothes— “However, at East High, we will discover ourselves whilst clothed.”

Troy is still laughing, even through Darbus’s mini-speech welcoming the freshmen into the drama club whether they wanted to be a part of it or not, and it’s starting to get really old.

“If you would resume the stretches, please, Ryan,” Darbus says, and only then seems to notice that Ryan isn't there, which is surprising; his absence from the stage is palpable to Chad, insistent and distracting. He would’ve thought Darbus would have felt the difference, too.

“I'll go get him,” Chad volunteers, and Mrs. Darbus nods sharply. Chad heads backstage at a light jog.

The light is on in the men’s dressing room. The door is open, but Chad knocks on the doorframe as a heads up, and he can hear the water shut off. “Come in,” Ryan calls.

Chad steps in. “Darbus said she needs you for the stretching stuff.”

“Right,” Ryan says, drying his hands off and tossing the paper towel into the trash. “Just needed to wash my hands. You would not believe the gunk that's on the stage floor,” he finishes brightly, adding a pronounced shudder. Something sounds different about his voice, though, and Chad realizes with a start that he's lying—acting, more accurately.

“You okay, Evans?” Taylor would probably say something about his lack of tact, but whatever, he has to try.

“Peachy,” Ryan says, still smiling, but the bitterness in his voice is obvious now.

Chad swallows. “Seriously, what’s wrong, man?”

Ryan’s expression hardens. It’s almost a relief, though, because at least he’s showing his real reaction. “What’s wrong—god, okay, you really don’t fucking get it.”

Chad waits, and raises an eyebrow when it seems Ryan isn’t planning on elaborating. “Get what?”

Ryan swallows, and his anger isn’t diminished by any fraction of a degree, but on top of it he now looks so scared. “Sharpay and I turned 18 three weeks ago.”

Chad remembers hearing about the lavish birthday party, and seeing Sharpay’s new, brighter pink car and wondering what Ryan’s gift was. “Yeah, I know.”

Ryan rakes a hand through his hair. “I can be tried as an adult. Like, I obviously _could_ have been before, because the legal system is shit, but no amount of my parents’ money can get me out of that now. And they can buy my way out of an F in chemistry, sure, or into a good college despite it” —he looks pained, but continues— “but not out of a sexual assault charge.”

“Wait, what the fuck?” Chad stares at him, horrified and deeply confused at the turn this conversation has taken. “You didn’t assault anyone.”

“Did you know that the gay panic defense is still accepted in court in 48 states? And last I checked, Albuquerque isn’t in California or Illinois.” Ryan sounds vaguely hysterical, like that one time sophomore year when he did a rendition of Lady Macbeth’s monologue to the drama club while Chad was painting sets in detention.

Chad rubs a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, man, I’m really not following.”

Ryan takes a deep breath. “Everyone at this school knows I’m gay, Chad.” And now is really not the time to be dwelling on Ryan’s use of his first name, but, well. “And you and Troy fucking Bolton just led two naked freshmen boys directly in front of me. All it takes is one person to decide I looked at either of those guys a half-second too long, or at all, and suddenly half the school is saying I tried to touch an underage basketball player and I’m fending off an accusation. Or one of their teammates thinks he saw me staring at one of those kids and decides to take matters into his own hands, and he tells the court, ‘I’m sorry, your honor, I didn’t mean to attack him, I was temporarily out of my mind because he tried to hit on someone,’ and the court says ‘yeah, that makes sense, go on your merry way back into the public, just try not to bash any more queers this time. Or do, we don’t really give a shit.’”

Ryan is breathing hard, and his face is flushed an intense red, like when he finishes a complicated musical number but without the smile on his face, the contentedness that always radiates from him when he’s onstage. He yanks the sink handle and splashes water on his face. “God, Sharpay’s going to fucking kill me. She always thinks I overreact to this shit. Maybe she’ll be too busy taking over my musical to notice,” he muses.

Chad hands him a paper towel. Ryan takes it without looking at him and dries his face off.

“That’s easy for Sharpay to say; it doesn’t affect her. I think your reaction was totally understandable—honestly, I’m kind of scared for myself, now, since I was the one to actually take their clothes.” Chad swallows. “I’m really fucking sorry, Ryan.”

Ryan presses his lips together. The raw fear in his voice has been forced out, replaced by that carefully measured bitterness. “Yeah, well, try not to lose too much sleep over it. There’s a solid chance your basketball scholarship and heterosexuality will save you.”

Ryan brushes past him to leave, and Chad shrugs internally. He’s involved with the drama geeks now; might as well take advantage of the excuse to be dramatic.

“I wouldn’t bank too much on that last one.”

Ryan freezes halfway through the door.

“Honestly, the main reason I’m not out is because of the basketball scholarship,” Chad continues. “And the basketball team, both the one here and at U of A. A lot of the stuff you said last summer, about why you quit baseball—I wasn’t ready back then to say that I get it, but yeah, I get it.”

Chad can hear Ryan breathing, recognizes it from his endless insistence that the cast practice yoga breaths to calm stage fright and opening night nerves, even though they’re still over a month away from opening night. It can’t hurt to get in the habit, Ryan is always saying. “You’re—you’re not straight.”

Ryan can’t see him shrug, because he still hasn’t turned around, but Chad does it anyway. “I’m not straight,” he confirms.

Ryan swallows—Chad can see the muscles move in the back of his neck—and nods once.

“I’m sorry,” Chad says again.

Ryan exhales. “Just tell Troy he’s not as funny as he thinks he is, next time,” he says, and walks away.

 

Chad tries repeatedly to catch Ryan’s eye during detention—Ryan didn’t get detention, of course, because he didn’t do something fucking stupid like steal two kids’ clothes; he stayed after school to work on sets _voluntarily_ (although Chad figures he’d probably do the same thing if the alternative was spending more time in a house with Sharpay)—but Ryan is always across the room and looking away. Chad meets Kelsi’s gaze a few times, though, and tries to smile at her each time. She just gives him really strange looks in response.

He hangs around for a few minutes when he’s done painting to see if Ryan needs a ride, but Ryan’s mom pulls up in a lavish and impractical car and sweeps Ryan and Kelsi off to who knows where, so Chad heads home. He texts Troy to see if he wants to shoot hoops and gets no response, which means Troy is with Gabriella, so he goes into his driveway by himself and launches the basketball against the headboard, listening to the crashing sounds until it’s dark out.

“Doesn’t sound like you made very many,” his mom teases at dinner. “Forget how to play since your last practice?”

Chad shrugs. “I just needed something to do to get my energy out.” His mom nods; she’s a huge fan of constructive outlets. Chad looks at his plate. “So I, uh… I did something really stupid today.”

His mom sets her fork down. “We need to wait for your father to get home to have this conversation stupid, or we’re specifically having this conversation while your father isn’t home stupid?”

Chad shrugs. “Neither, really. It’s just, Troy and I pranked some of the freshmen who wanted our gym lockers…” His mom raises an eyebrow, and he knows that means he needs to elaborate, and fast. “We, like, ran through the school with their clothes when they got out the showers, and they seemed okay—I know we still shouldn’t have done that to them, that’s not what I mean—but just, it really upset this guy I’m trying to be friends with, and I don’t want to have messed things up with him that badly, and I don’t really know what to do about it.”

His mom folds her arms. “Focus on your friend later. Right now, you need to apologize to those boys.”

“Yeah, I know,” he sighs, and proceeds to hear all the ways in which he is now grounded.

 

The next day, Chad stops by the yearbook classroom with Troy and a tray of brownies he paid Zeke $20 for—those A’s in Zeke’s Family Science class are totally going to his head. Troy, of course, thinks the brownies are a bribe to get better photos of them in the yearbook, not a thank-you for deleting yesterday’s pictures of Rocketman and Donnie. He can tell from the look Taylor gives him that she doesn’t buy this as a group gesture, but whatever, she’s eating a brownie instead of questioning it.

“Zeke doesn’t know they’re gone, so you have to eat all the evidence,” Troy says, and Chad wants to facepalm or maybe knock some sense into his past self so he’d have just told Troy the plan, but instead he mouths _I paid him_ in Taylor’s direction.

She rolls her eyes and mouths back, _I know._

“Kissing up to the yearbook editors,” Gabriella says, and Chad wonders if she’s just playing along or if Taylor actually didn’t tell her. “Smart move.”

“Yeah, well, Chad’s hoping for two pages on himself. Maybe even a third page, just for his hair,” Troy says, rolling his eyes. It strikes Chad that if Troy knew he wasn’t straight, that’d probably be a gay joke. As it is, he makes a quip and laughs it off.

“Hey, Troy, by the way, could you take me after school to check out that tuxedo?” he asks, just to shift his thoughts away from further wondering about what would happen if Troy found out that he’s gay.

Troy nods. “Tuxedo? For what?” Taylor asks, fake confused, and Chad grins, rolling his eyes. Banter, he can do.

“For prom.”

“Aw, honey. If that’s what you call an invitation, you’ll be dancing with yourself,” Taylor says, and elbows his basketball out from under his arm. She huffs off, and Chad follows, hearing Troy’s laughter in the background.

“Wait, you know I wasn’t asking you, right?” he asks under his breath when he catches up to her at a printer. Taylor rolls her eyes.

“Obviously. But I’m not wrong; Ryan would never go for that.”

To his credit, Chad only takes about three seconds to recover from the discovery that Taylor knows all of his deepest secrets. By this point, he’s fairly used to her knowing literally everything, anyway. “Okay, so what do you suggest I do?”

She shrugs. “Talking to Kelsi would be a good start. She is his best friend and all.” She says it in that way of hers that suggests he should have already thought of this, but he thanks her anyway and heads to find Kelsi as soon as the bell rings.

She’s in the practice room, as he expected, and thankfully Ryan isn’t there. Chad taps on the glass and she turns, startled, but brightens when she sees that it’s him, which is a good sign.

“Hey, do you have a minute?” he asks, tucking his hands in his pockets and bouncing slightly on his toes.

“Yeah, come on in,” she says, shutting the door behind them. She gestures to the piano bench, and he sits. She sits beside him, which is kind of awkward because they’re very close and it’s hard to actually look at each other, but whatever.

“So, uh, two questions, I guess,” he says. Kelsi nods. “One: does Ryan hate me right now?”

Kelsi bites her lip, but not in a “he totally hates you and I don’t want to have to tell you” way, more like she’s trying not to laugh. “No. He’s not exactly thrilled with what happened, but Taylor might have let slip to me and I might have let slip to Ryan what you did with the yearbook, so while I’m not going to say all is forgiven, he knows you weren’t trying to hurt anyone. You just didn’t really think things through.”

“Yeah, I know,” Chad says, and tries to run a hand through his hair without elbowing Kelsi in the face.

“Next question.”

Chad glances at her. “Does he like grand gestures?”

She tilts her head slightly. “It depends, I guess. If it’s ‘here’s an extravagant apology to convince you to forgive me,’ then no, he gets enough of that with Sharpay. If it’s something else… Well, he _is_ a fan of all that is over-the-top.”

Chad nods slowly. Kelsi hesitates, but continues. “Look, I’m not trying to make any assumptions here, just—don’t do anything unless you’re sure. Gabriella stopped talking to him after last summer because Troy got jealous and apparently it was easier for her to ditch Ryan than to tell her fucking boyfriend that her friend is gay. He doesn’t want to be ashamed of it, you know—neither of us do—but it’s a lot harder when other people are ashamed of us.”

Chad stares at the piano keys, trying not to wonder why Gabriella didn’t want to even mention someone being gay to Troy. Trying not to think what that will mean for him. After a second, he glances at Kelsi and tries to look supportive. “Did you just come out to me?”

“I don’t know,” she says, grinning. “Did you just come out to me?”

“Touché,” he responds, smiling back, and she glances at the door.

“Heads up, you have about twenty seconds.” He doesn’t need to ask until what, and sure enough, Ryan steps through the door nineteen seconds later, once again balancing two coffees. He passes one to Kelsi and raises an eyebrow at Chad.

“I feel like I should start asking for your order, too.”

Chad shrugs, but inside he’s—exploding into confetti. Spinning like a thousand pinwheels. Dancing. “I have a free period.”

“Yes, well, not that I don’t enjoy your presence, but we do have work to do,” Ryan says, but he smiles at him, and Chad’s brain is going wild repeating the part about Ryan enjoying his presence, so he nods.

“See you at lunch,” Kelsi says, as if that’s something they’d discussed, and he’s pretty sure she winks at him.

“Yeah, see you,” he says, and leans against the wall for a minute to collect himself as soon as he leaves the room.

 

Chad spends the half hour until lunch pacing in the locker room and trying to figure out when, exactly, his heart started going haywire around Ryan Evans. It must’ve been sometime between the championship party and his fuck-up yesterday—sometime during those first few weeks of rehearsals, he must’ve started noticing when Ryan wasn’t there, when Ryan was acting, nodding calmly to Sharpay and then rolling his eyes at Kelsi or sometimes Chad as soon as she turned away—but then he remembers automatically looking Ryan’s direction in homeroom whenever something happened, wanting to see his reaction to an outrageous homework assignment or some classmate’s petty drama, and has to admit that this has been a long time coming. And then—then he thinks about the summer, about his very obvious once-over even as his brain was screaming at him that he shouldn’t do this, his teammates were watching, about their legs tangled together over home plate and his heart racing faster than it has for any other game, any other win, even the championship—

He’s been dancing (or not-dancing) around this for at least a year, if he’s being honest. When Troy decided to audition for a goddamn musical and said, shrugging, “Sharpay’s kind of cute,” Chad’s first thought was, _So is her brother._ And now they have five weeks of school left, and according to Taylor, Chad has no idea how to ask someone to prom.

He does know one thing, though: Kelsi told him not to do anything unless he was sure.

He’s sure.


	4. Ryan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for brief ableism
> 
> it's BACK, y'all!! i'm sorry for the immense delays - i meant to have this up ages ago, but college and chronic pain have been kicking my ass for a while now, so. my goal when i started this fic was to have it done by the end of the year, which is obviously not going to happen, but no matter how long it takes, i Will see this to its gay af conclusion.
> 
> thank you so much to everyone for sticking with me and for all of the comments you've left on this fic - they've kept me motivated <3 also, my other chad/ryan fic, never danced like this before, recently reached 10,000 hits!!! thank you so, so much to all of you - that's just unfathomable to me, and it makes me so happy.
> 
> i hope everyone has a great end of the year <333

The prom scene is probably the choreography Ryan’s most proud of, even if it is obnoxiously heteronormative. Everyone is starting to look like they know what they’re doing, even Jason, and if Chad meets Ryan’s eyes for a few beats too long as he waltzes with Taylor, well, Ryan tries not to think about it. Which is surprisingly easy, since he doesn’t have time to think about anything other than counting beats and adjusting postures and making the last few tweaks to footwork until after rehearsal.

Everyone’s singing is pretty good, too, even though it’s not his job to deal with that. On the second or third run-through of the afternoon, he’s confident enough in everyone’s dancing to glance away from their feet once every few minutes, and he gets to enjoy the other details of the number, such as when Kelsi makes a face at “dressing to impress the boys” and Mrs. Darbus, unexpectedly, lets her get away with it. Ryan’s not a huge fan of that lyric, either, but Kelsi is the one who wrote it, so it seems kind of hypocritical of her, but he’s not about to argue. He can’t help smiling to himself a few lines later when Taylor sings, “No one better wear the same dress as me,” staring pointedly at Kelsi’s identical costume; it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Taylor would normally care about, but it would admittedly be awkward if they did the whole matching-couple thing.

Not that that’s anywhere near official yet, but Ryan’s an optimist.

Sharpay promptly ruins his good mood at the end of rehearsal. “I bet Kelsi’s writing something amazing for Troy and Gabriella,” she says, crossing her arms, and Ryan barely suppresses his eyeroll. As if Kelsi cares more about making Troy and Gabriella look good than about her own work being good enough to get her into Juilliard. 

“A song, most likely,” he says, biting back a dozen even more sarcastic responses. 

Sharpay huffs. “Just find out what it is.”

Ryan sighs and walks off to find Kelsi; they need to talk about recent changes to the scenes they’re rehearsing tomorrow, anyway. His mood improves somewhat when he sees Troy, who had leaned in to kiss Gabriella, be immediately cockblocked by a freshman—“Dude, stop doing that!” Troy says, and Ryan can’t help but snort. Just as he reaches the other side of the stage, he hears Troy telling Rocketman that Sharpay has a secret crush on him. Ryan spares a second to pray for the poor kid’s soul. 

Kelsi is backstage, sitting on a throne that’s been repurposed throughout dozens of productions and writing rapidly on some sheet music. Ryan rests his elbow on the top of the throne back and leans forward to read over her shoulder.

“There’s not enough light back here to be reading,” he says, and Kelsi doesn’t look up, but he knows she’s rolling her eyes.

“You sound like my mom.”

“God, I hope not. The importance of avoiding eye strain is probably the only area in which the two of us would agree.” She’s still scratching out lines and drawing arrows in the margins. Ryan frowns. “There is such a thing as over-editing, you know.”

“Bullshit,” Kelsi says, pushing her glasses up her nose. She sighs, and finally looks up at him. “It has to be perfect.”

Ryan gives her a reassuring smile. “It already is perfect, Kels. Don’t wear yourself out.”

“Yeah, easy for you to say,” she scoffs, looking back down and flipping to the next page.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Kelsi’s shoulders are stiff, and her pencil is pressing sharply into the page. “All of my compositions have to be flawless. You know I can’t afford Juilliard on my own—I can’t afford any music school on my own, and my parents aren’t about to pay for it, so if I don’t get this, I’m going to have to be a fucking business major, and I’m competing against Troy Bolton, who gets everything the theater has to offer bestowed upon him without even trying, and you and Sharpay, who, yeah, you work your asses off, but I don’t know why you’re even competing for this scholarship because it’s not like you need it—”

“You know I do,” Ryan interrupts sharply. “My grades aren’t good enough to get in through general applications. This scholarship is solely talent-based; if I don’t get it, they’re going to take one look at my GPA and SAT scores and say good luck at community college.”

“There’s nothing wrong with community college,” Kelsi says, jaw tight.

“No, there isn’t, unless you want to be on fucking Broadway.”

“Well, maybe you should’ve thought of that before you and your sister spent your junior year scheming instead of studying.” She turns to face him, and although he’s spent the past few minutes trying to get her to look at him, he now wishes she wouldn’t. “You have control over your grades, Ryan. I don’t have control over my parents’ bank account.”

Ryan takes off his hat, runs a hand through his hair, and tries to make his fingers stop shaking from frustration. “You literally just said that even if they had the money, they wouldn’t pay for you to major in anything within the arts. And you of all people should know—you’re one of the  _ only _ people who knows—that even if I should be in control of my grades, I’m not in control of my brain, and no matter how much money my parents have, that’s not about to change—”

“Yeah, but they pay for your tutors. And they’ll do their damnedest to pay your way into Juilliard, too, even if you don’t deserve it.”

“Maybe because they fucking give a shit about me and my dreams,” he says, but inside, he’s thinking,  _ How dare you. _ He’s thinking,  _ You’re right. _

 

After Kelsi slams her folder of music shut and stomps off, and after Ryan presses his forehead to the wall, cries a little bit, and somewhat composes himself, he changes clothes, grabs a bucket of paint, and walks onstage. He’s about halfway through with the first coat on the door of a house from the prom scene when someone in the audience calls, “Hey, Evans! What are you still doing here?”

“I could say the same to you,” Ryan calls back, smiling in spite of himself. Chad, who is leaning against the wall by the theater door, shrugs. 

“I was going to try to catch you after rehearsal, but I didn’t see you, so I figured you’d already left. Then I get outside, and I see this baby blue scooter in the parking lot, and I’m like, ‘That can only belong to Ryan Evans. No one else in Albuquerque has the guts to pull that off.’ So I came back in.” At this distance, Ryan can’t quite tell if Chad is smirking at him, but it’s a reasonable inference. 

“To do what, mock my taste in motor vehicles?” Ryan asks, but he’s smiling. Chad shakes his head and pushes off the wall, walking toward the stage.

“Nah, I was planning to ask if you wanted to go get food or something. But I can help you paint instead, if you want.”

Ryan shrugs. “Sure. I just need a constructive outlet right now, you know?”

Chad snorts. “You sound like my mom.”

“That is the second time I’ve been told that today. Brushes are over there,” Ryan says, gesturing at the bucket just inside the wing. 

Chad grabs a brush. The other paint buckets are over there, too, and Ryan expects him to pick one up, but instead, he dips his brush into the same bucket Ryan is using and starts painting the door with him. “Who else said you sound like my mom?” he jokes, and Ryan rolls his eyes.

“Kelsi said I sounded like her mom earlier. Among other things.”

Chad raises an eyebrow at his tone. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know, we both just said a lot of hurtful stuff. We’re both stressed from working on the play, and with the scholarship and everything…” Ryan sighs. “She deserves it, and I’m more than a little jealous. I don’t want to let it come between us, but I also can’t make myself care any less about this—I’ve wanted to go to Juilliard since my first dance lesson, you know? It’s everything to me. That obviously doesn’t justify the shit I said to her, and like, I know she wants this just as badly as I do, it’s just… It sucks.” 

“No kidding.” Chad looks away from the door and at Ryan. “I can get where you’re coming from; I’ve wanted to play for U of A since I was like six. I can’t imagine being up against Troy for the same scholarship.”

“Yeah,” Ryan says, running a hand through his hair. “It’s hell.” 

“I’m sorry,” Chad says, and Ryan manages a small smile.

“Thanks.”

They paint in silence for a while, moving from one door to the next. It’s almost eight when Chad announces that the paint bucket is empty and stretches his back, the hem of his shirt riding up across his stomach. Ryan swallows and looks away. 

“So where do you want to eat?” Chad asks, grinning, and Ryan tries not to look too surprised. Either his acting is shit right now or Chad knows him too well already, because Chad says, “That was my initial question, like, two hours ago, remember?”

“Right,” Ryan says. His throat is dry, and he’s not sure if it’s from the paint fumes or from Chad’s arms in his t-shirt with its characteristic weird slogan. 

“I’m going to go wash the brushes,” Chad says, and Ryan hands his to him. “Be thinking of where you want to eat, because I’m starving and paint is toxic.”

Ryan nods, too emotionally exhausted by the past few hours to think of a response. Painting with Chad had been calming, yeah, but it was also a very specific kind of agony.

“Where to?” Chad asks a few minutes later, tossing his keys from one hand to another. 

Ryan shrugs. “I figured pizza.”

Chad gasps, mock scandalized. “You know, Evans, for someone so sparkly, you can be remarkably boring.”

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Sparkly, huh?”

“Have you seen your hat lately?”

Ryan has; it’s lime green and glittery, and he’s worn it to every audition for years. It hasn’t been helping much in the luck department lately, to be honest.

Chad swallows, and doesn’t quite meet Ryan’s eyes as he adds, “And, I mean, your personality and all. You’re just… bright, man, you know? Energetic and unapologetic and all that stuff.”

Ryan gapes at him for a second before Chad coughs and says, “Anyway, pizza it is. Let’s get going before Darbus gives me detention for the rest of the year for eating her props.”

Ryan laughs and starts walking towards the exit. “Gross, Danforth.”

Chad just grins. 

 

“So, why’d you decide to spend your whole evening at the theater?” Ryan asks once they’re seated in a corner booth with a mostly-eaten large pizza between them. “You didn’t exactly seem thrilled when Gabriella signed you up; I would’ve thought you’d want to get out of there as soon as possible.”

Chad leans back in his seat and shrugs. “Maybe things have changed since Gabriella signed me up. Don’t act like you haven’t noticed—I know you pay attention to stuff.”

Ryan smiles wryly, looks away, and unsuccessfully attempts to convince himself that the things that have changed have nothing to do with him. He remembers dancing with Chad, their hands clasped together, and wonders, and wants.

“Besides,” Chad continues, and Ryan forces himself to take a breath and look back at him, “Troy’s been kind of a dick lately.”

“How uncharacteristic,” Ryan says, deadpan, and Chad snorts.

“Yeah. I guess I needed a distraction, y’know?”

Ryan nods. “Glad to be of service.” He takes a bite of pizza and hesitates, swallowing. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Chad sighs. “I don’t know, I get that he has to figure out his own path in life or whatever the fuck my mom says, but that doesn’t mean he has to throw everyone else to the side while he does it. And don’t get me wrong, I like Gabriella, but it seems pretty ridiculous to choose your high school girlfriend over the dream you’ve had since you were fucking six.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Ryan says, wincing. “I mean, dreams change, and if he genuinely wants to do something else, that’s his decision, but—it doesn’t look so great from the outside.”

“No kidding.”

“Sorry he’s being shitty to you,” Ryan says as Chad grabs the last slice of pizza. Chad looks at him, and Ryan forces himself not to swallow or blink or move in any way; it feels like the slightest shift, and his hands, his throat, his eyelashes will give him away.

“Thanks,” Chad says, and looks away, and Ryan exhales.

 

Ryan gets to school even earlier than usual the next morning, but Kelsi is still in the practice room before him. He pours himself a cup of tea and doesn’t allow himself to hesitate before sitting beside her on the bench. She’s working on “I Just Wanna Be With You”—it’s probably the one she was editing last night. Ryan plays the first few notes, and Kelsi slides the sheet music over closer to him. He lets out a little of the breath he’s been holding; that’s a good sign.

“I got a lotta things I have to do,” Ryan sings on cue, “All these distractions—our future’s coming soon.” When he glances at her, she’s smiling slightly. “We’re being pulled—”

“A hundred different directions,” Kelsi sings with him, and he grins.

“But whatever happens,” he continues, forcing the lump in his throat to retreat until later.

“I know I’ve got you,” they sing in unison, looking at each other.

“It’s beautiful,” Ryan says.

“It’s for you,” Kelsi says quietly. “I mean, Troy and Gabriella will be singing it, but—it’s for you.”

“I’m really sorry.” Ryan takes his hands off the keys and folds his fingers together. “I know you have to work as hard as you do, and I hate it for you, but I shouldn’t have tried to stop you. And… I’m really sorry for bringing your parents into it, that was a low blow. I fucking hate that they aren’t supportive of you—all of you—and I should’ve been supportive, too, not tearing you down like that.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Kelsi says. “I never should’ve said those things about your dyslexia and stuff—god, that was so shitty of me, especially when I know how hard you work at everything, and I know your parents’ money doesn’t magically make your life perfect. That was just. Such a dick move.” She leans her head on his shoulder. “You’re one of the only people in our class I’m really going to miss, and I don’t want to fuck things up in the last few weeks we have together.”

Ryan wraps his arm around her. “I’m going to miss you, too. You deserve that scholarship, you know. I really hope you get it.”

Kelsi buries her face in his shoulder and hugs him. “You deserve it, too.”  _ Not as much as you _ , Ryan thinks, but that’s not the kind of conversation he wants this to be.

“So,” Ryan says after they sit in silence for a few minutes, “what are you doing for prom?”

“It’s two days before the show,” Kelsi says, rolling her eyes at him, “What do you think I’m doing? I’ll be writing orchestrations and fixing charts—I still have to write lyrics!”

“Great,” Ryan says, grinning at her. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

She elbows him, but he just laughs and starts playing again. “You’re on my mind, you’re in my heart; it doesn’t matter where we are,” he sings, “We’ll be alright—”

“Even if we’re miles apart,” she sings with him, and even though he feels like he’s going to start crying, he believes it.


End file.
